BBC confirms transmission date for River

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October is going to be a busy old month when it comes to crime drama. We brought you the news that From Darkness, Lewis and Unforgotten will premiere in the first week of the month (see that story here), but we also knew that the BBC’s other big new crime drama, River, would be appearing somewhere in that area, too. Now Auntie has bitten the bullet and told the world.

CReated by the excellent Abi Morgan, River stars Stellan Skarsgård as John River, a brilliant police officer whose genius and fault-line is the fragility of his mind. Nicola Walker (who will also be on ITV in Unforgotten) and Adeel Akhtar line up alongside Skarsgård, as Detective Sergeant Jackie ‘Stevie’ Stevenson, River’s colleague and confidant, and Detective Sergeant Ira King. Lesley Manville (An Adventure In Space And Time) is their superior, Chief Inspector Chrissie Read, with Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan) also joining the cast as a notorious killer who plagues River.

John River: a Detective who lives among the dead and dying victims and killers from the murder cases he’s trying to solve.

John River: a man whose vulnerabilities and eccentricities are brought to the fore as he grieves the loss of his dearest friend and colleague, DS Jackie Stevenson.

The stages of his grief mark River’s growing bonds with those he has excluded from his heart and his mind, and when a murder suspect jumps to his death whilst being pursued by River, the pressure and scrutiny that surrounds him escalates fast.

As the investigation into Stevie’s murder begins to reveal her deepest secrets, River has to question everything he thought he knew about his one true friend. Their relationship might have survived her death but can it survive the truth of who she really was in life?